The current liturgical year, Cycle B, endswith the feast of Christ The King on November 25th and thenAdvent, Cycle C begins on Sunday December 2nd.

The gospels of St Mark have predominated the B cycle with a little of the Gospel of St John.

In the next
cycle, C, the Gospel of St. Luke’s view of Christ's story is read and after this, if we are all still here (!), Cycle A, gives St Matthew’s version. Image source

Traditionally,
the Christian liturgical calendar year ends with a reminder of the end of the world and life on
earth. The first reading from Daniel and the gospel from St Mark today both
present apocalyptic messages of the end of the world.

These end time readings form part of eschatology: the study of last things inthe Christian tradition, the
events that lead to the final coming of God’s kingdom.

From Daniel’s description of a world in distress to Mark's description of days of
tribulation and darkening of the sun and moon, and all the power of
heaven and nature shaken, the signs are of the end.

Perhaps total solar eclipses allow us to experience in a small but primal visceral way, a sense of apocalypse. I witnessed one in Cornwall some years ago and found the experience quite surreal. It was both beautiful and frightening.

Even the milder vision of the end of the world and given by Jesus himself, of the fig
tree going through its natural growth cycle, is pretty scary, but a tad easier to cope with. A vision of Jesus coming at the end of time’s
cycle and waiting and calling out for us all to meet him has some sense of gentility about it.

But even that image has me curious because I remember reading somewhere that Jesus cursed the fig tree for not bearing fruit at a time of year when it could not have been possible for it to do so !!

Maybe that's why the ending of this gospel contains a wry joke when Jesus admits that even His sense of timingof events is not perfect.

"But of that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

But whatever the timing may be, the scriptures talk of Christ's second coming
that will bring about the end of the world and separate humankind into good
and evil is one that I find hard to dwell on for too long without a severe case of the shivers.

Fr. Richard Rohr, in his book Hope
Against Darknesswrote after the Katrina disaster and the Haitian earthquake and long before Hurricane Sandy, " that there are three major
perspectives that make up our total window on reality: our world-image, our
God-image, and our-self image. They are largely operating unconsciously in
most of our lives. I guess in this case, I would also have to add a fourth:
one’s “eschatological”-image.

Forgive the big word, but it just means “Where do
you think this is all heading?” What is the final goal of history? And in
religious language, “What is the spiritual end that we are all heading toward?”
This eschatological perspective might be the best one to help us frame or
reframe this disaster. If you
know the final end, you can make some possible sense of the means and the path.

If the “eschatological” goal of history is
that all things come into
free and conscious union with God (and that is what I believe),
then the how, when, where of that is entirely up to God’s Providence and good will.

We are all being
saved in spite of ourselves, so do not look for some pattern of perfect
order—which is the usual illusion of both very religious people and atheists,
and why they both can become so rigid. God seems to have the flexibility and
freedom to live with disorder.

If nothing else, tragic events do force us to
bring our operative images to consciousness. Who is God? What is it all for?
What does it mean to be human on this earth? Tragedy brings us into the human
struggle in very concrete ways, which is the only way that people do come to
high levels of consciousness, freedom, and even love. Now I admit, that is
small consolation to someone who has lost family and home in this disaster.
They would willingly remain unconscious and unfree, if this is the price. But
what about love? We are certainly seeing its outpouring in a truly global
compassion, probably unmatched in human history. Is this a way for us to
realize we are one world, and not just these warring, self-interested nations?

Freedom in nature is an all-or-nothing decision on God’s part. If the created
world is really free to take its course, then God cannot step in sometimes and
not step in others, or the world becomes whimsical, scary, and incoherent. The
very existence of science is based on this observation.

God clearly does not
stop every chilly wind that you and I deem uncomfortable, or every rain that
ruins a Papal Mass. God normally
does not stop the natural progression of healing nor the natural progression of
cancer either .

As some have said, evil is live spelled
backwards. The patterns of evolution and devolution are inherent. God does not
seem to intervene in the small things, which we can understand.

But we get damn
angry and mistrustful when God does not stop the big evils. From our frame, it
clearly becomes a tragic and unjust universe. And it is. The story of Job made
that very clear.

So the only answer I can give is the one that
was given to Job. Yahweh, in effect, says to him:

1) I am
listening.
2) You do matter to me.
3) The struggle itself is key, and even good.
4) There is a meaning to the universe.
5) I know your suffering and can work with it, if you let me in.
6) Even though you cannot trust what you see, you can trust me.
7) This psychic/spiritual relationship is often the beginning of Divine
Intimacy.

This disordered universe, nature itself, and
the disorder of our own minds and hearts, is all being drawn into an order not
of our making. Disorder is the same as freedom, you know. God took the great
risk of making us free, and also kept it for Himself, which he then uses in our
favor.

Remember, mercy
itself is the essence of divine disorder. Forgiveness is God breaking God’s own
rules, but for our good!

All I know is that the Biblical revelation is
saying that through all of the mess and disorder of history, God is committed to a
loving and saving response to all that God created. God holds himself to the
rules of the created order during the ordeal of time, but allows himself what
Julian of Norwich calls “a final great deed”.

I will call it, God’s great
escape clause, God’s perfect and total freedom. I don’t know what else would be
worthy of a God who is “glorious, victorious, and unsurpassable,” as the Psalms
say. Acts 3:21 calls this final deed “the universal restoration.”

If you want
to see this belief developed brilliantly, read "If Grace is True", by Gulley and
Mulholland. As Blessed John Duns Scotus taught, “Decuit, Potuit, Fecit.” If it
is fitting, and it is possible, then God will do it.

Belief in the final judgment has God saying
“I will not intervene until the end.” But the real point is to leave room for
God’s final and complete victory.

Wait and see how God will break all the rules
of logic, and order, and merit, and justice, and who deserves what, and who has
suffered more or less. We will “know the meaning of salvation through the
forgiveness” of everything! (Luke 1:77). God’s almightiness is precisely in the
realm of mercy.

Finally, all creation will see God’s full
power to save. Our sufferings and deaths will be a drop and a passing moment in
a final tsunami of forgiveness. Our hope is cosmic."

The institutional part of the Roman Catholic Church, the “magisterium”
is self-destructing. However, my faith in the Incarnation, in
“Christogenesis,” the “coming to birth of the Cosmic Christ” and the
ultimate Communion of this Christ with God , I Corinthians 15:28, is
unshakable."

and "Stardust made Flesh" by Barbara E. Reid, a Dominican Sister of Grand Rapids, Mich., a professor of New
Testament studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., where
she is Vice President and Academic Dean.

"I hope you’ve met at least one “Kingdom person” in your life.
They are surrendered and trustful people. You sense that their life is okay at
the core. They have given control to Another and are at peace, which
paradoxically allows them to calmly be in control. A Kingdom person lives for
what matters, for life in its deepest and lasting sense. There’s a kind of
gentle absolutism about their lifestyle, an inner freedom to do what they have
to do—joyfully. Kingdom people feel like grounded yet spacious people at the same time, the best of the conservative and the
best of the progressive types at the same time.

Kingdom people are anchored by
their awareness of God’s love deep within them and deep within everyone else,
too. They happily live on a level playing field, where even God has come to
“pitch his tent” (the literal translation of John 1:14). Whatever they are after, they already seem to
be enjoying it – and seeing it in unlikely spaces. Kingdom people make you
want to be like them… Mostly, though, Kingdom people lead … ordinary lives…
Kingdom people are anchored by their
awareness of God’s love deep within… When you live in the Kingdom, you
live in a “threshold space” between this world and the next. You learn how to
live between heaven and earth, one foot in both worlds, holding them precious
together…”

With fainting soul athirst for Grace,
I wandered in a desert place,
And at the crossing of the ways
I saw a sixfold Seraph blaze;
He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night:
And like a frightened eagle's eyes,
They opened wide with prophecies.

He touched mine ears, and they were drowned
With tumult and a roaring sound:
I heard convulsion in the sky,
And flight of angel hosts on high,
And beasts that move beneath the sea,
And the sap creeping in the tree.

And bending to my mouth he wrung
From out of it my sinful tongue,
And all its lies and idle rust,
And 'twixt my lips a-perishing
A subtle serpent's forkèd sting
With right hand wet with blood he thrust.
And with his sword my breast he cleft,
My quaking heart thereout he reft,
And in the yawning of my breast
A coal of living fire he pressed.

Then in the desert I lay dead,
And God called unto me and said:
"Arise, and let My voice be heard,
Charged with My will go forth and span
The land and sea, and let My word
Lay waste with fire the heart of man.

1. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it
were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a
bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and
to conquer. 3. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
4. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given
to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they
should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
5. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say,
Come and see. And I beheld, and saw a black horse; and he that sat on
him had a pair of scales in his hand. 6. And I heard a voice in the
midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three
measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the
wine. 7. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him
was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them
over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger,
and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Archive Lent Posts 2013 and 2012

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Seamus Heaney Quotes

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetime,The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.So hope for a great sea changeOn the far side of revengeBelieve in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be:"I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame:"The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet:"My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority"At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Taize Chants

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Kyrie Chants

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Dynamite !!

“You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits...” Mahatma Gandhi

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternityIan Bradley The Celtic Way

Guaranteed to Lift The Spirit

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A Concord Pastor Comments

Every Monday Morning join Fr Austin Fleming for a prayer . Click on the coffee cup for the archive

Sacred Space

Pope Francis Twitter Feed

A Big Heart Open To God

Pope Francis -How The Church Will Change

Dialogue between Pope Francis and Eugenio Scalfari:

Daily Meditations Pope Francis

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Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”﻿

-- Pope Francis

L'Osservatore Romano English Version

Newspaper of The Holy See Click on Pic

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Fr. Richard Rohr Quotes

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Cyber Theology Daily

Word On Fire Blog Posts

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Cardinal Tagle Video Interviews

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Franciscan Quote of The Day

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Did the Woman Say ?

Did the Woman Say?

Did the woman say,When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,‘This is my body, this is my blood’?

Did the woman say,When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,‘This is my body, this is my blood’?

Well that she said it to him then,For dry old men,brocaded robes belying barrennessOrdain that she not say it for him now.

~Frances Croake Frank

Daily Reflections Creighton Ministries

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Sunday Mass Readings

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Great Resource for Sunday Scriptures, Commentaries and Reflections Click on Banner

Playing For Change

Sites on Prayer

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. Butyou can reach out to them, and all day long.The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And""You can get all A's and still flunk life." "Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?" -Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

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